Panini Launches The Essential Doctor Who

Following the success of 2013’s 50th anniversary specials, Panini’s bookazines continue with a new title: The Essential Doctor Who. Highlights of the first edition include a brand new Cyberman, specially illustrated for this issue by their original designer Alexandra Tynan.

The Essential Doctor Who: Cybermen is a lavish 116-page guide featuring details of every Cyberman episode. There are exclusive new interviews with scriptwriters Neil Gaiman, Gareth Roberts and Marc Platt, choreographer Ailsa Berk and four of the actors who have played Cybermen. The publication also includes archive interviews with Cyberman creators Kit Pedler and Gerry Davis, as well as features on comics, novels, audio stories and Davis’ unmade serial The Genesis of the Cybermen.

Editor Marcus Hearn was the author of the New York Times bestseller Doctor Who: The Vault. “Our writers include the estimable Andrew Pixley and our art editor is the brilliant Peri Godbold, so we obviously share our DNA with Doctor Who Magazine,” he says. “But there are a lot of new voices in there as well, and I hope we’ve been able to preserve DWM‘s authoritative tone while creating our own identity.”

The Essential Doctor Who: Cybermen is on sale now at WH Smith and newsagents, price £9.99.

A long-term Doctor Who fan, Christian grew up watching the show and has early memories of the Graham Williams era. His favourite stories are Inferno, The Seeds of Doom and Human Nature (although The Empty Child, Blink and Utopia all come close). When he’s not bossing around the news team, Christian is a freelance writer specialising in mobile technology and domestic computing, and enjoys classic rock, cooking and spending time in the countryside with his wife and young children. You can find him on Twitter, Facebook and Google+.